Wednesday, July 24, 2013

New Mindfulness for Health Programs: Art of Living for Teens and Parents

"As you gradually free yourself from stress, you become healthhier, more resilient, confident, happier.Achieve more of your full potential.MINDFULNESS can help you get there."

Lou Carcasole, B.Sc, M.B.A, M.Ed

Mindfulness - the Art of Living in the Moment

So what actually is mindfulness?

Mindfulness means paying close attention to our own everyday experience; to all that we see, smell, hear, taste, touch, think and feel.

Mindfulness was developed in many cultures, over thousands of years, and has been effective in bettering the lives of countless people. The skills of mindfulness are easy to learn. Like learning to drive a car, our first attempts at being mindful are hesitant and as we progress we do it naturally. By learning to do this, we become more precise about, and open to all our experiences, large and small, pleasant, unpleasant and neutral. Gradually we discover that we experience life in a new way.

Mindfulness does not ask us to believe in anything. All we do is attempting to live in the moment. The more we practice living in the moment, the more we able to do it! It gives us a feeling of freedom and ease.

By learning techniques that anybody can do, we radically change the way we experience our own mind, body, emotions, our pleasures and pains, our relationships, etc. We gradually open more fully to our life and discover how deeply fulfilling it is. We become happier, more focussed, skillful, and compassionate. We become better able to love and help others.

Mindfulness can be especially helpful to those who experience anxiety and depression, chronic pain and illness, cardiac disease, the demands of caregiving, life threatening illness, grief, spiritual emptiness and difficulty finding balance in current lifestyles.

Mind/body approaches work because they go beyond the physical to address the framework of habits and behaviors, i.e. neuropaths that impact our health. They teach individuals to break old and harmful cycle of stress-anxiety-physical tension-symptoms-disease and develop the new healthier behaviors.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program

We, at The Art of Life Community Health Centre set up the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program - a series of eight Mindfulness workshops conducted by Lou Carcasole, B.Sc, M.B.A, M.Ed for more than 5 years ago. Lou started his own Mindfulness training in 1987 with teacher Shinzen Young, an American meditation teacher and a Buddhist monk. Lou began teaching Mindfulness in 1996and since then he has taught Mindfulness to thousands of people in the Toronto and GTA area.

In 1999, Lou trained with Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, the founder and director of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and he learned about the MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program). Based on Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn's renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, Lou began measuring results as objectively as possible, in attempt to quantify changes occurring as a result of the practicing Mindfulness. The results have always been positive, almost always impressive, and sometimes spectacular.

New Mindfulness Programs

This year along with the MBSR program The Art of Life offers Mindfulness-Based program for teens, which suffer from different health & psychological conditions (including ADD/ADHD) and would like to improve their lives.

We also offer a new course “Parenting could be difficult – Mindfulness can help!”, recognizing the hard work and not easy life of some parents.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workshops

The workshops will include discussion and practice of mindfulness. There will be time for questions and answers. There will be suggestions for mindfulness techniques to use between workshops; at home or at work, while going for a walk or waiting for a doctor's appointment. Objective results measuring will be conducted at the end of the course.

All programs framed in a 8-week course will start in a week after an
Open House at The Art of Life CHC, 885 Don Mills Road, Suite 121,
Toronto M3C 1V9 (Don Mills Road and Eglinton Avenue East, entrance from
Wynford Dr. and Gervais Dr.).

Most of the courses will take place on Tuesdays at different times although another day/time possibilities are negotiable.

Suggested cost for new students - $300. For students who have completed previous the Art of Life Mindfulness courses - $150. No one with financial difficulties will be turned away; those who couldn't afford the fee they pay what they could afford for the course.